His only hope was that she hadn't endured days and days of hell before she went unto the Fade.
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"What did you do with the female?" Zsadist growled to the next slayer. When all that came back at him was a
"Fuck you," Z pulled a Tyson and bit the bastard.
Why Zsadist cared about a missing civilian female, no one in the Brotherhood could understand. He was known for his misogyny... hell, he was feared for it. Why Bella mattered to him was anyone's guess. Then again, no one, not even Phury, as his twin, could predict the male's reactions.
While echoes of Z's brutal work cut through the isolation of the forest, Phury felt himself cracking under the interrogation even as the lessers stayed strong and gave up no information.
"I don't know how much more of this I can take," he said under his breath.
Zsadist was the only thing he had in his life other than the Brotherhood's mission to protect the race against the lessers. Every day Phury slept alone, if he slept at all. Food gave him little pleasure. Females were out because of his celibacy. And every second he was worried about what Zsadist would pull next and who would get hurt in the process. He felt like he was dying from a thousand cuts, slowly bleeding out. A target by proxy for all his twin's murderous intent.
V reached out with a gloved hand and clasped Phury's throat. "Look at me, my man."
Phury glanced over and cringed. The brother's left eye, the one with the tattoos around it, dilated until there was nothing but a black void.
"Vishous, no... I don't..." Shit. He didn't need to hear about the future right now. Didn't know how he would handle the fact that things were only going to get worse.
"The snow falls slowly tonight," V said, rubbing his thumb back and forth over a thick jugular vein.
Phury blinked as an odd calm came over him, his heart slowing to the rhythm of his brother's thumb. "What?"
"The snow... it falls so slowly."
"Yes... yes, it does."
"And we've had a lot of snow this year, haven't we?"
"Uh... yes."
"Yeah... lot of snow, and there's going to be more. Tonight. Tomorrow. Next month. Next year. The stuff comes when it comes and falls where it will."
"That's right," Phury said softly. "There's no stopping it."
"Not unless you're the ground." The thumb stopped. "My brother, you don't look like the earth to me. You're not stopping him. Ever."
A series of pops and flashes broke out as Z stabbed the lessen in the chest and the bodies disintegrated. Then there was only the hiss from the shattered car's radiator and the heavy pump of Z's breathing.
Like a wraith he rose from the blackened ground, the blood of lessers streaking his face and his forearms. His aura was a shimmering haze of violence that warped the scenery behind him, the forest beyond him wavy and Page 7
J R Ward: Lover Awakened
indistinct where it bracketed his body.
"I'm going downtown," he said, wiping his blade on his thigh, "to look for more."
Right before Mr. O went back out hunting for vampires, he released the clip from his nine-millimeter Smith & Wesson and eyed the inside of the barrel. The gun was overdue for a cleaning, and so was his Glock. He had other shit he wanted to do, but only an idiot let his heat degrade. Hell, lessers had to be on top of their weapons. The Black Dagger Brotherhood was not the kind of target you wanted to get sloppy with.
He walked across the persuasion center, making a little detour around the autopsy table they used for their work. The one-room layout had no insulation and a dirt floor, but because there were no windows, the wind was mostly kept out. There was a cot that he slept on. A shower. No toilet or kitchen because lessers didn't eat.
Place still smelled of fresh boards, because they'd built it only a month and a half ago. Also smelled of the kerosene heater they used to warm it up.
The only finished fixture was the shelving that ran from dirt to rafters down one whole forty-foot-long wall.
Their tools were laid out, nice and neat, on the various levels: knives, vises, pliers, hammers, Sawzalls. If something could rip a scream out of a throat, they had it.
But the place wasn't just for torture; it was also used for storage. Keeping vampires over time was a challenge, because they could poof! on